This is the first time I have ever WANTED to help somebody move house. Alas, it's a bit of a commute for me.

Best of luck and congratulations on your new abode!

What She Said.

May no ill thing arise!

Dang! As a member of your NYC readership, I would have been delighted to pitch in. However, I'm leaving the country tomorrow evening. No, really, I am: for a week with friends in Oxford.

If you're still unpacking over the weekend of the 4th, I'd be happy provide an extra pair of hands. In the mean time, congrats on the new digs.

any chance of new house pictures, she inquired hopefully?

Congratulations on the upgrade, commiserations on having to move all the books.

Having just done the "What do you mean we're moving now?!?" dance, I offer sincere condolences and wishes for good luck.

Unfortunately, Chicago is a bit of a hike to come help in person, but I'll think good moving-Karma thoughts in your general direction.

I haven't lived in Brooklyn since 1968, and have no notes in front of me, but isn't Green-Wood Cemetery the resting place for the first person to die on a baseball field, during a game, in the 19th centery, with a gravestone that displays a bat, glove, and winged baseball?

I sold a story once that revolved around that person, and I did some research on the dawn of baseball in Brooklyn. The story was then not published. I retracted it, because the anthologist demanded All Rights.

"we’re leaving Park Slope and moving three stops south to Sunset Park, trading our dingy cramped apartment in a building held together with paint for a large, light-filled, and freshly renovated row house about ten doors down from the hills and weeping angels of Green-Wood Cemetery."

So it looks like you're moving up in the world. Hopefully, that 'three stops' means closer to work, and not further away.

Now, if your previous lodgings were not so good, should the city building inspector's office be notified, so that they could 'help' the landlord get the building up to code before the sale? After all, it shouldn't cost much :)

My Other New York Sources say the place is wonderful. I'm really glad--having helped with the last move, I think you guys were due a step up in the world (somewhere there's a large bag of Good Karma with "nielsenhayden" on it--have you checked Lost Luggage?). Wish I could help shlep, but as others have said, bad commute.

May it all go smoothly. May you live there happily for many years. May your former landlord find extensive termite damage before he puts the building on the market...

Wishing you clear, cool days free of rain
Plentiful packing supplies
Fine booze
Kitchen things in the kitchen and books on the shelves

Blessings on your new digs, and I regret not being around to help. May your helpers be plentiful, weather appropriate, and boxes properly labeled.

I like helping people move--people never expect me to move anything big or breakable, and I get to look at all their stuff without guilt. (I particularly like checking out what books they have.)

I'm sure you have lots of books, and I'm sure this has already occured to you, but get little boxes for the books. Moving lots of little boxes is better than that scary look people get in their eyes when they see YET another box of books packed into a box intended to hold pillows or dishes or giant fuzzy blankets. (Big boxes, in other words.) I realized during my last move, a little too late, that I'd run out of little boxes, so I ended up drawing cartoons all over the REALLY big boxes, letting people know what they were in for. Some of the cartoons had my moving crew dispatching me and disposing of my body in the nearby creek--I figured that was at least one possibility.

I would love to come help you move, but alas, like Jill and Graydon and others, the commute is a little on the long side. Your new place sounds just lovely, and I hope you enjoy making it your own. I think that's the best part about moving--rearranging the accumulated belongings, and setting it all up like it was brand new and you were just seeing it for the first time.

Not termites, Madeleine.

Indian graveyard.

* * *

". . . light-filled . . . "

Um . . . always?

Where does the light come from?

Is it ghostly and blue, like Cherenkov radiation, or pearly white, like something you're not supposed to walk into?

I also like coming up with fun names for all the packed boxes, or writing the numbers and names in funky ways. Box the Twelfth is always art supplies for some strange reason. (I had to label all my boxes with numbers and contents when I moved from Canada--but I don't recommend the more entertaining labels if you go over country lines, as it took Customs three and a half weeks to finally release my belongings. Customs can't count in Roman numerals.)

Congratulations on the new place, boo, hiss at the scumminess of your almost-former landlords. I hope that once the move is done you find lots of places in the new neighbourhood that are as nice, fun, and full of tasty food and drink as the places in the old.

Like others, I wish I could come help!

But my best wishes are with you. Internet weather sez Brooklyn should have a partly cloudy, not-too-hot weekend, So I'll pray that it holds.

I will think happy, easy-moving thoughts as the only contribution I can make from thousands of miles away. But congrats on finding a nice place!

Picusfiche tempted fate and said:

I also like coming up with fun names for all the packed boxes, or writing the numbers and names in funky ways. Box the Twelfth is always art supplies for some strange reason. (I had to label all my boxes with numbers and contents when I moved from Canada--but I don't recommend the more entertaining labels if you go over country lines, as it took Customs three and a half weeks to finally release my belongings. Customs can't count in Roman numerals.)

Heh! I'm quite surprised that customs didn't say anything about my last perigrination. -none- of the boxes were labeled by the moving company that packed us! [said moving company also deserves an unspeakable fate for a litany of other reasons].

The "pack books in small boxes" rings especially true - they packed our books into large wardrobe boxes!

Good luck with the move, and I hope landlords are no longer a problem (either because you're buying--wasn't clear to me--or because they're more reasonable people . . . ).

I'm on the opposite coast, alas, but best wishes and lemonadey thoughts as needed!

Once, on moving Coast to Coast, I snailmailed 92 big boxes of books. 91 arrived. 89 of these were mine, and 2 were random combinations of mine and somebody else's. I visualize a special Postal facility where boxes are broken open and their contents shuffled together...

New home sounds like heaven. Which leads me to:

Question: have the Nielsen Haydens actually moved to an alternate reality where Brooklyn never was subject to a friendly take-over by New York City, and still retains its status as a top 5 U.S. city, and where the Dodgers never moved to L.A.? Was Asimov ever Mayor? Did Walt Whitman win the first Nobel Prize in Literature? Just wondering...

I'll be up at S&S this weekend inputting corrections for [big rush book] by [famous writer]. If I get any time on Sun. I'll give you a call, but it doesn't look likely.

Green-Wood Cemetery is incredible--and a lot of the time, despite the rules, you can just walk in. I've been there twice and it's fantastic. They have regular tours that allow you to visit the crypts (that was one visit). Definitely check it out if you can.

Anyway, good luck on the new move, and let me know relevant info when you have it...

JvP wrote: I visualize a special Postal facility where boxes are broken open and their contents shuffled together...

"Honey! Honey, come here. I think they sent us the Ark of the Covenant. And I can't find my Hanes anywhere."
----
May you have an easy move, T and P. May nothing get broken. My father moved recently. The movers rolled his piano across the (formerly) nice wood floor of his new house.

Enjoy the new place! May all possessions and persons involved make it to the new place unbroken and unlost, and may you never have to hunt through more than two boxes to find that essential item you need Right Now.

Ack! Rotten luck that you picked MoCCA weekend. Makes me much less available then I otherwise would be.

Best of luck on the move!

In terms of post-office mixups, the champion is the time a friend (in New Zealand) sent another friend (in Maryland) a box of geological specimens. What arrived was a small plastic bag of Chinese laundry detergent.

We're still scratching our heads over that one.

What is it with landlords this month!?!?!?! Mine did the exact same thing to me, giving me one month to move after five years of tenancy. Ack! The bastards. I'm moving this Sunday, so I shall send my good moving wishes to you and hope all goes smoothly. I'm sure it's too late now, but I have discovered that USPS #7 Priority Mail boxes are the perfect size for books. And (at least down here) you can get them in packages of 25 for free. The will even deliver them to the house. Of course, I got mine from friends who had some left over from their move. The had over 300 filled... I can only lay claim to 150. I'm sure your library puts us all to shame. (p.s. I'm also moving to someplace bigger, nicer and sunnier--and right on the streetcar line. Visitors welcome.)

Wow, you're moving into the neighborhood next door to me (your long-time lurker!).
If you really do want some help from near-total strangers, I could probably walk it Saturday morning.
:)

Yeah, we're well aware that our move conflicts with the big MoCCA weekend; my assistant Liz Gorinsky is one of its main organizers. Can't be helped.

Robert, Green-Wood Cemetery opened itself to the general public just a year or two before; you can just walk in any time during the day. We've been in a couple of times--it's a trip and a half.

Barry, it's three stops further from our office, but as luck would have it, our new nearby subway station is an express stop, so our commute may wind up being a minute or two shorter anyway.

Ugh. Moving blows. There is NOTHING fun about moving, at all.

But hey, if it keeps the post in which you link my blog close to the top of your page, well, take your time!

"'. . . light-filled . . .'
"Um . . . always?
"Where does the light come from?"

Stefan, you've been around here a while now. Do you actually have to ask that?

Moving into a Better Place is a splendid thing, especially in the Five Magical Boroughs (in a Borough where one Travels in a Hole in the Ground there lived . . . uh, never mind). Best wishes on the project. For what it's worth, my experience has always been that a couple of books will vanish (this will have no connection with whether they were packed together), a couple long thought lost will turn up, and at least one will appear from L-Space. Moving house is merely Newtonian action; moving books is disturbing the universe in the purest Dysonian sense.

Add my goodwill to the wishes for cool and dry weather, easily located necessaries, plentiful and useful helpers, and an absence of mechanical failure. Add my regrets to those of the other geographically constrained.

And may your new kitchen sprites and your transplanted ones cohabit with minimal surprising results.

Actually, aside from being a cliche of apartment listings, "light-filled" in this case simply means high ceilings, big windows, and a general sense of being something other than a cave. Compared to our old apartment, that is.

There were nice things about our old apartment. We weren't completely crazy to move into it. Those things don't include the quality and layout of the space itself.

My last move involved trucking a house worth of stuff from Virginia to Ohio. Not entirely easy.

But I can't help but wonder if, from a pure logistics standpoint, it might be easier to haul a houseful of stuff between states than between any two points in New York City.

I'll be lifting heavy objects for you in spirit (in body, I'll be working on a book).

'"light-filled" in this case simply means high ceilings, big windows, and a general sense of being something other than a cave.'

If I were in the NYC area, I'd offer to help move, but I'd also have to attempt a Moe Howard style two-fingered poke in the eyes at you for thinking I didn't know what "light-filled" meant in this context.

Hope the move goes well and without incident! Glad you found something more comfortable.

Mike:

"Where does the light come from?"

Stefan, you've been around here a while now. Do you actually have to ask that?

On the off-chance that you don't mean what I would mean (and since no one seems to have gotten it, if so)

She makes it, to feed his illumination.

Ain't symbiosis romantic?

* A great [house | apartment] warming gift, at least for those with carpeted floors:

A certificate for a carpet cleaning service. Moves are MESSY.

Or, to steal a trick from trade show roustabouts, tape down plastic drop cloths.

* Nice things to give to people helping you move:

Box cutters

Grippy gloves. Gemplers makes a nice set of these. Tough woven fabric with palms and fingers covered with little red rubber dots. They protect the hands and give you an powerful grip.

So, is this a reasonably good aerial view of the new neighborhood?

(That's looking roughly west, with the corner of Green-Wood Cemetery in the center foreground, Sunset Park at center left, and the docks of Bush Terminal toward the top.)

-- Recon Junkies R Us

Good luck on your move! We'll hoist a drink in your direction from Midwestcon.

On long-distance moves for bibliophiles (I know this isn't one, but still): USPS Media Mail is your friend. I shipped a couple of dozen *big* boxes of books several thousand miles for around a hundred bucks, after the moving company quoted me two prices (with and without my library) and the second was almost a thousand dollars more than the first. That was after the incredibly painful 50% reduction in bookage around the house. My new postal carrier hated me at first, but he got over it.

Even better, the books actually got there before the rest of our stuff did, so even though we were sleeping on the floor the first couple of weeks, we had plenty to read.

Well, Glen, I can see our new place on your aerial shot, so yeah, that's a pretty good view.

We're just west of the cemetery on one of those blocks between the cemetery and the waterfront. What the aerial view doesn't convey is how Olmstead-and-Vaux Green-Wood is, full of hills and bluffs and carefully-engineered romantic views. The 19th-century Sublime, there's nuttin' like it.

High ceilings are all very well, but what about deep loam and morning sun and all the other requisites for gardening?

Good luck! I hope everything goes well.

Heaps of luck to you both on your new move! I will send you whatever good moving vibes I'm not using for my (smallish) move this weekend, to a nice apartment which will allow both cello playing and a dog, posesses an actual balcony rather than a vestigial smoking ledge, and has a nice south-facing sliding glass door. Coincidentally, this was also found on Craig's List.

In the 7 years that I worked at bookstores, I moved 4 times, and wound up brutally culling my books each time. I'm getting better at knowing what to keep now (I've bought new copies of books I've deaccessioned more than once) but my archivist roommate cannot seem to stick to any kind of collection policy when it comes to her action figures. At least mint-in-box is pretty light-weight.

Well, off to remove the packing material - er, sheets and duvets - from the dryer!

Well, if I hadn't finished dealing with movers just today and weren't planning on throwing my "leaving the East Coast" party next weekend, I'd offer to come help, but instead I will send all of my left-over "good moving karma" your way.

(Given how smoothly things have been going the last week or so, I should have plenty to spare. May all of your books arrive intact!)

You know I'd be there and helping if I could, but I'm committed both to the dog and cats I'm housesitting and the little parade in SF this weekend....

OK, this would put you on the mighty M train, among others, which (weekdays only, unfortunately) goes direct from my neighborhood to yours, or vice versa. Get into it...

"light-filled," adj.: With windows that, for at least a few hours a days, allow actual direct sunlight to penetrate tha apartment..

Y'know, you gotta give us a bit of a heads up here. Not only could some of us help you moved, some of us even knew where there were decent places to rent or even buy (you would become possessors of the mystical Eh-kwit-tee spoken of in legend.)

Nevertheless, let me see if I can do anything on Sunday. (This isn't altruism; I just figure it's the only way I'm going to get some of my books back...)

A few suggestions:

1. If you use a mover, don't sign anything until you've made sure every box and appliance left the old place and arrived at the new one. John and I lost two boxes on our big move Out West in 1986, including his 1950s Peanuts trade paperbacks. More recently, my mom ended up without a vacuum cleaner on a move from one zip code to the next.

2. Don't do any insane lifting. A herniated disk is nobody's friend.

Congratulations and good luck on the move. I'll be out here in Tucson, waiting for the monsoon.

Karen (who tried to plug Making Light on NPR on Tuesday)

Virginia to Ohio? Heh. That's nothing. Try Kentucky to East Hampton, driving your own truck and towing the car on a trailer behind. Through NYC. And then moving back again a year later. Now *that* qualifies as "not entirely easy."

Better than "tried", Karen--we started hearing about your Talk of the Nation call-in just minutes after it was broadcast, and we went and listened to it on the web once they put it up. Thanks for the kind words!

Robert, we've lived within two blocks of the Union Street M train stop for the last eight years. Honest. You can look it up.

Andrew, the new place has a lovely back yard, with rosebushes already established. Just before we moved in, the landlord kindly replaced the dead fig tree with a weeping cherry. The whole place is pretty much optimized for growing tomatos, herbs, and discretionary flowers.

Best of luck -- looking forward to some good cemetery blogging.

By a coincidence, I was looking for the mapquest-type service that gave aerial photos as well as maps, and can't seem to find it any more. Did Mapquest stop doing it, or was it somebody else? (Anybody?)

Betsy, no hope of pictures until the camera is unpacked. If you find any other pictures of Sunset Park row houses, they'll probably look just like ours, unless they're covered with vinyl siding. Ours is brick, with a green awning over the door, a broad masonry stoop, an all-concrete front area, and a black wrought-iron fence. And a backyard garden with roses and a weeping cherry tree and a little table with an umbrella and two chairs. Needs a barbecue.

Jonathan, if you'd asked me what cemetery contains the mortal remains of the first man killed on a baseball field, buried under a 19th C. stone that features a winged baseball, I'd have guessed it was Green-Wood Cemetery ...

Alas, time to move another load. Mr. Pierce should send flowers to my landlord.

Congratulations on the new place. I hope the move goes smoothly, and that the only interesting things that happen during it are the rediscovery of things you thought you lost in the old move.

(Oh, and that the rediscovered things are things you'd want to rediscover, too.)

Congrats on finding a new place on short notice that actually sounds pretty nice!
There's an Asian superstition that the first things you should bring into a new house/place are things you want an abundance of; traditionally these are salt and rice. (Why not money? hmm)

Moving tips:
According to some insanely meticulous woman on HGTV, the proper way to move is to label rooms and boxes to match. I think she color-coded them somehow. The idea being that the boxes go into the rooms they need to be unpacked at.
Her other tip is to pack one box for essentials you need for the first day/night at the new place.

Moving? Shudder. It's been bad enough redecorating the bedroom and tidying the living room (a 25 refuse sack job in its own right). Good luck, and I hope nothing important goes missing!

I was looking for the mapquest-type service that gave aerial photos as well as maps...

terraserver.microsoft.com has what you're looking for, as well as other places.

Perhaps a Dark Fantasy anthology called "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn"?

One fine respository of Brooklyn History was the bookstore of autodidact Sam Colton, on Montague Street, Brooklyn Heights. Sadly, that was evicted circa 1970 by a nasty landlord who wanted a boutique at the location. Then Sam died; his son Ray Colton took over, but moved the inventory to another location (ghod knows how many boxes of books); and at least half the inventory was lost to flooding. But if you can find Colton, you have found a treasure trove of rare books.

I'm still looking for my Baseball story, which has a walk-on by Walt Whitman.

It's easy to verify that Green-Wood hosts:

Henry Chadwick Henry Chadwick (October 5, 1824, Exeter, England - April 20, 1908, Brooklyn, New York) was a baseball statistician and historian.
Born in England, and raised on cricket, Chadwick was one of the prime movers in the rise of baseball to its unprecedented popularity at the turn of the 20th century. A keen amateur statistician and professional writer, he helped sculpt the public perception of the game, as well as providing the basis for the records of team's and player's achievements in the form of baseball statistics.

Charles Ebbets (1859 - 1925) - baseball team owner; built Ebbets Field (Brooklyn Dodgers )
Founded: 1883, as a member of the minor Inter-State League. The team moved up to the American Association in 1884 and transferred to the National League in 1890.
Ebbets Field was a Major League Baseball stadium in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York. It was the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers of the National League. The Brooklyn Dodgers football team also used Ebbets Field as it home stadium.
The park opened on April 9, 1913, and was demolished on February 23, 1960. The Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, California after the 1957 season.

To excerpt from ebbits-field.com:

Where is Ebbets Field located?

In the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, the official address was 55 Sullivan Place which is located on the corner of Sullivan Place & McKeever Place. This was better known as the famous rotunda entrance. The first base/right field line was located along Sullivan Place. The third base/left field line was located on McKeever Place. Beyond left field is Montgomery Street. Beyond right field/scoreboard is Bedford Avenue. McKeever Place was named in honor of the "Old Judge" Steve McKeever. After McKeever's death, (March 7, 1938) a ceremony was held at Ebbets Field at which the street, formerly known as Cedar Place, became McKeever Place. What largely gets ignored among historians is that prior to the construction of Ebbets Field another street existed on the site located between Cedar (McKeever) Place and Bedford Avenue. Pine Street, prior to 1913, was indeed on the map. After construction of the ballpark the street was abolished.
[Brooklyn is haunted by many ghosts of streets. Where can you bury a dead street?]

Who[m] is Ebbets Field named after?

Charles Hercules Ebbets is the man which bares the ballpark's name. Ebbets had been with the baseball club since the birth of the Dodgers in 1883. He worked his way up to Dodger President and majority stockholder, when he decided it was time to construct a new ballpark. He began secretly purchasing parcels of land in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn known as Pigtown. Ebbets eventually acquired all the deeds and on January 2, 1912, the announcement was made that a new steel and concrete ballpark would be constructed on the site. On March 4, 1912 the groundbreaking ceremony took place and it was here that the question was posed to Ebbets, "What is the name of the new ballpark?" Ebbets, after giving some thought replied, "Washington Park", the name of the Dodgers old ballpark. New York Times reporter/friend Len Wooster suggested Ebbets Field, reasoning with Ebbets, "It was your idea and nobody else's, and you've put yourself in hock to build it. It's going to be your monument, whether you like to think about it that way or not". Ebbets replied, "All right, that's what we'll call it, Ebbets Field."

How come the Dodgers had so many nicknames?

Contrary to popular belief, the Dodgers, in fact, had only one official nickname; the "Dodgers." Prior to Ebbets Field, the team simply referred to itself as the "The Brooklyn Base Ball Club." Reporters found this to be lengthy not to mention boring to it's readers. Since the team's birth, local baseball writers began using catchy phrases in referring to the "The Brooklyn Base Ball Club." When the team debuted in the Major Leagues' American Association in 1883, reporters referred to the team as the "Grays." The logic was simple, it was the team's uniform color. Many nicknames were coined by reporters over the years, by far the Dodgers hold one distinct record that will probably never be broken, the most nicknames!

[explanations on that website of nicknames:
* the Bridegrooms
* the Grooms
* Ward's Wonders
* Trolley Dodgers
* Superbas
* Robins
* Bums

I see that my previous post went on a little long.

This time, just the URL:
www.brooklynhistory.org/calendar.html
about walking tours of Brooklyn baseball history, and the name I'd not been able to remember:

James Creighton

If the wesite is current, then the baseball tour of Green-Wood is this very weekend!

June 27
Walks & Talks
Sunday, 2 p.m.
Brooklyn Baseball History
Part III:
Baseball's Real Elysian Fields: Green-Wood Cemetery.

Author or co-author of more than a dozen books on baseball and baseball history, and contributor to numerous periodicals, Gilbert co-chairs a coalition that is working to preserve Brooklyn's Washington Park wall. His Greenpoint house sits on the precise spot where the Eckfords, one of the first organized baseball clubs, played in the 1850s.

This moderately lengthy walk will meet at Green-Wood Cemetery, where the group will pay visits to some of the baseball pioneers discussed in Parts I and II, including Henry Chadwick, James Creighton, and Charles Ebbets. Gilbert will discuss the enduring mystery of the shocking and untimely death of Creighton, baseball's first great star and subject of the first-ever baseball card.

Let me be the last to congratulate you on your success in finding a more than decent place, and all best wishes for your speedy move and recovery. I look forward to seeing your new address in Ansible.

I think I've helped enough in the past with your moves to be excused from wishing I were in New York now to help you once again....

mayakda-

In Japan, at least, rice was money.

Teresa, Patrick-

Much good wishes, sparklies, etc. on the new place. If it weren't such a long commute, well, y'know.

Mayakda, in some places in the US, the customary hostess gift to new owners/residents is bread and salt.

The terraserver image for my area actually shows my van in the parking lot -- it's a lot closer in than the one of T&P's.

Marilee: The custom of bringing bread and salt to a new home stems from, in part, an old Jewish custom. The theory (as far as I've been taught) is that bread and salt reflect the tradition of welcoming new neighbors with a meal.

Bread and salt/rice and salt--whoever does it, wherever the custom comes from--is a piece of sympathetic magic enshrined in folk customs all over the place. It's to ensure prosperity and plenty, because salt and the "staff of life" [whatever that staff happens to be--bread, rice, whatever] are essentials--the salt farther back than the bread, of course, since it wasn't just a seasoning but vital for food preservation.
In my hillbilly background, the saltbox was supposed to be the first thing in the kitchen; the first thing in the new house if you could manage it. A bag of meal or barrel of flour, back in the day, would have stood in for the loaf of bread, as my great-grandparents would have been more likely to eat corn bread than 'raised bread' made from wheat or rye.
My mother also claims it's bad luck to move your broom, as this brings all your old troubles over to the new house--and she interpets this to includes mops as well.

A blessing upon your new home,
A blessing upon your new hearth,
A blessing upon your new dwelling,
Upon your newly-kindled fire.

I hope the move went well!

One big difference between my East Coast pre-grad school life and Silicon Valley & Beyond professional life was that there was no longer a tradition of helping friends move.

It's not that I missed it, but there seemed something decent and right about showing up for a few hours of hard labor followed by pizza.

Stefan: Yeah, I definitely agree on missing that sort of thing. A friend of mine is moving (also in Silicon Valley), and though I suggested that a subgroup of our mutual friends could get together to help and save him the trouble of hiring movers, it turned out that only one other person volunteered to help, and she can't lift heavy things.

Thing is, though, I don't think it's a location difference, so much as different types of people. Some others of my friends in a different social circle were moving last year, in a complicated arrangement involving four people moving from three separate places on two separate weekends (plus one of them moving her stuff into a storage place a month prior), and they had at least a couple of dozen people showing up to help.

There definitely did feel like there was something decent and right about it, completely aside from the fact that I enjoy driving large rental trucks.

Despite the scummy way the former landlord forced y'all to move, it sounds like you got out on the side of angels and have a better place to live. Congrats and Cheers on the new place!